It’s been a while since our last update, caused mostly by the fact that Neil has been stressed out finishing a college assignment, and so too busy to blog, combined with the fact that we’ve moved up to Lamu, where our broadband dongle won’t work, so we’re without net access in the evenings.
And what a week since our last post. We finished all our work in Mombasa last Friday, and left our apartment Saturday morning to make the journey up to Lamu. It was great arriving on a Saturday afternoon and having a day and a half to chill out before we got stuck into classes again – the team had a chance to enjoy the wonderful Shella beach, experience a night-time dhow ride off the coast of Lamu, take some walks around Lamu old town (the entire old town is a UNESCO world heritage sight, and extremely beautiful), and generally catch up on some eating and sleeping.
Monday morning saw us get cracking again. The Camara hub in Lamu is in a terrific location – right on the town square, and only five minutes from our hotel, and the team have well settled into training at this point. The standard of the students is considerably more basic than in Mombasa, which is at least making us keep the tecahing materials fresh by making us re-jig things to suit the standard of the classes. But yet again, everyone’s getting a great buzz from the teaching. One interesting observation most of the guys have been making is that students here are far better than Irish students at learning by rote – they have an amazing capacity to memorise things. However, the flip-side of this is a substantially weaker ability to think creatively, or to connect pieces of information together. Something else to keep us on our toes!
Back to some observations on Lamu itself – the town is genuinely stunning. There are only three motorised vehicles on the island that we have noticed (one car, a jeep that serves as the ambulance, and a tractor), and the difference that makes to the pace of life is extraordinary – walking, donkeys or dhows are the only possible methods of transport, which naturally slows everything down. We’re also getting much closer to Kenyan life – the market takes place in the town square 7 days a week, so we get to see people bargaining over their shopping, and living their normal lives (we were a bit more removed from real life in Mombasa). Also, as there are a lot more tourists here, we don’t quite attract as much attention just by virtue of being white, which people are quite enjoying.
Better get back to work, but we’ll try to keep the posts a bit more regular from now on in (apologies for the lack of photos, but upload speeds are far too slow for us to even consider uploading some of the thousands of photos we’ve taken – that’ll have to follow when we get home…).
